Introducing OTT Intelligent Classification
Have you ever looked at your network traffic analytics and wondered what’s hiding in that 10–20% slice of “Unclassified” Over-the-Top (OTT) traffic? We’re excited to introduce a new way to dramatically improve OTT traffic classification in Kentik: OTT Intelligent Classification, now available for all Kentik Service Provider (SP) Analytics customers.
What's New?
Kentik SP Analytics customers can now enable Intelligent Classification in their OTT Service Tracking workflows. This new capability uses a sophisticated statistical model to intelligently identify service traffic that was previously unclassifiable.
Kentik's OTT Tracking traditionally relies on our True Origin engine, which correlates DNS telemetry with network flow data to classify traffic deterministically. This method provides highly accurate, transparent, and verifiable classification, without requiring deep packet inspection (DPI) appliances.
However, a portion of network traffic, typically 10-20%, can remain unclassified. This most often occurs when:
- Subscribers use external DNS resolvers (e.g., Google DNS at 8.8.8.8 or Cloudflare DNS at 1.1.1.1),
- Simple devices (like streaming apps on smart TVs) don't embed a DNS client
- DNS caching prevents lookups from occurring on the observed network
All of these scenarios can prevent Kentik from capturing the DNS lookups required for deterministic classification.
To address this, Kentik built OTT Intelligent Classification. Here’s how it works: when Kentik’s True Origin can’t deterministically classify traffic, Intelligent Classification takes over. It analyzes known traffic patterns for high-volume, multi-service IP addresses and probabilistically maps unclassified traffic based on those profiles.
The result is a far more complete and accurate view of the OTT services running on your network – and visibility into traffic you could never see before. With OTT Intelligent Classification, Kentik customers can now expect to achieve 90-95%+ of their traffic accurately classified, unlocking deeper insights and better data for network planning and operations teams.
Here's how Kentik's OTT Detection Engine operates without OTT Intelligent Classification:
And here's how it operates with OTT Intelligent Classification activated:
Once enabled, Intelligent Classification users will see a new toggle at the top of all OTT pages in the Kentik portal, including the main Overview, Capacity, Provider Detail, and Service Detail pages. This toggle lets you easily switch the feature on or off and instantly refresh the page to reflect the corresponding dataset you wish to use, giving you complete control and confidence in how your analytics are derived.
In addition, you’ll notice a new OTT Classification Type dimension within Kentik Data Explorer. This lets you see precisely how each flow was classified – deterministically or statistically – and gives you the flexibility to filter reports and queries by classification type.
The table below details the possible values for the OTT Classification Type dimension:
Value | Classification Group | Description |
Fixed, full | Fully Classified | Traffic to a server IP matching a static CIDR defined in Kentik's service definitions. |
Direct, full | Fully Classified | A DNS lookup from the specific subscriber to the server IP was observed. |
Indirect, full | Fully Classified | No direct DNS lookup was observed for the subscriber; however, all lookups for the server IP from other subscribers map to a single service. |
Indirect, provider-only | Provider-Only | All observed lookups for the server IP map to services from a single provider (e.g., multiple Google services). |
Statistical, full | Intelligently Classified | No DNS lookup was observed; the service was assigned probabilistically based on the server IP's known traffic profile. |
Direct, ad-hoc | Pending Classification | A DNS lookup was observed, but the domain name does not match a known OTT service pattern. |
Indirect, ad-hoc | Pending Classification | All observed lookups for the server IP share a single domain name that does not match a known service pattern. |
Unclassified | Unclassified | None of the above classification conditions were met. |
Why It Matters
For telcos, MSOs, and ISPs, deeply understanding the mix of OTT traffic across your network is fundamental to effective network planning and optimization.
With a more complete view of service consumption, Kentik users can make smarter, data-driven decisions about capacity planning, peering, and performance tuning. By revealing the true traffic ratios between services like Netflix, Disney+, and YouTube – even when they share the same CDN – OTT Intelligent Classification enables a new level of precision in network optimization that simply wasn’t possible before.
Get Started!
Ready to join early access for OTT Intelligent Classification? Reach out to EMAIL to request Intelligent Classification be enabled for your organization. Once activated, Kentik will begin generating the new intelligently classified data. You can then navigate to the OTT Service Tracking dashboard and use the new Intelligent Classification toggle to instantly enrich your views and uncover the powerful insights you've been missing.
